by S. R. Witt
Heck shouted in surprise as a screaming flechette pierced the outside of her left thigh, right above the seam where her cybernetics connected to the flesh. Sparks and blood sprayed from the wound, and she yowled like a kicked cat as she crumpled to the floor with one hand clasped over the bloody hole.
She twisted her body to take the brunt of the fall on her elbow and protect the girl from smashing into the floor. Sparklers of pain erupted from her funny bone and shot through her body.
When she was able to breathe again, Heck shouted over comms. "Report!"
The laboratory was so thick with acrid smoke she couldn't see who was still on their feet and who was down. She took a deep breath and tried to remain calm while she waited for the rest of her team to chime in. It felt like hours, but it could've only been a split second before Hive's voice crackled in her ear. "Damaged, but still operational."
Throd followed, hot on Hive's heels. "I'm not hit. Just took me a second to get back on my feet after that monster rang my bell."
Heck didn't even try to stand. She cradled the naked girl in her arms and scooted across the floor on her ass, staying low so the Ogre wouldn’t take another shot at her. Fortunately, there was enough debris and broken equipment lying around to provide plenty of cover from the killer drone’s sensors. Heck didn't stop moving until she reached the wall beneath the maintenance tube access panel.
Throd was already there, waiting for her. The big man crouched down next to Heck and peered at the young woman. “Boss…”
She shook her head. She was too tired and too pissed to argue with her crew. This was her decision, and it was final. "I know, this wasn’t part of the scenario, and I don’t give a shit what any of you think. We’re taking her anyway."
Throd rested his hand on Heck’s shoulder. "I’m with you, Heck. But she's been hit."
6
A cold fury closed its claws around Heck’s heart. Her team needed this win, but the wounded girl in her arms deserved better than this death. She wasn't a pawn to be used in games between corporations or governments, she was flesh and blood and she deserved a chance to stay that way.
Heck wanted to tear the Ogre apart with her hands for what it’d done, but she knew the time for fighting had fled. Now, it was time to get the hell off this miserable station. "Throd, tear down the wall between us and the Ogre. If it wants in here, make the hunk of scrap work for it."
Red ooze, a witches brew of nanotechnology, anagathics, and engineered growth hormones, bubbled in Heck's wound. In the seconds since she'd been hit, most of the surface damage was healed, and organic filaments had sealed up the ruptured blood vessels and sutured the torn muscles. If she'd taken a hit to her femur, it would take longer to fix, but Heck knew she’d be back on her feet soon.
The wounded girl, on the other hand, might not be so lucky. Something, a flechette or a piece of shrapnel judging by the fact it hadn’t torn her in half, had torn a hole in her gut, but hadn't blown out of an exit wound.
Could be good, could be bad, Heck thought to herself. On the plus side, whatever had hit the girl might not have penetrated very far into her skinny torso. On the minus side, it might've entered her abdomen and then pinballed its way through every juicy vital organ before lodging in the girl’s spine. There was no way to tell how serious her injury was until they got the girl back to Dragora where she could receive real medical attention.
Heck thought about reaching out to the ship, but Throd picked that moment to unleash the full fury of his weapons. Even the cybernetic comms unit implanted in every Operative's skull couldn't penetrate the thundering wall of sound generated by Throd's autocannons as he emptied clips into the support structures surrounding the laboratory's door. The Ogre’s many spider-like helper arms struggled to reload its weapons in a hurry, but it wasn’t fast enough to get another salvo off before the wall came crashing down.
"Good enough," Heck shouted when the last expended shell casing from the autocannons jangled to the floor. "Now, new plan. Everyone get in the tube."
Throd lifted the girl gingerly from Heck’s arms and wrapped her in the tattered wreckage of his armored jacket. Heck wanted to kick herself for not thinking of that earlier. Something so simple might’ve saved the girl a lot of pain and suffering.
Hive scrambled up through the access panel, sparks spurting from new damage to his legs and torso. The carbon black plating had peeled away from his metal shell, revealing scorched and dented metal. He reached his arm back through the panel and helped Heck climb up to join him.
Heck leaned back through the panel and took the girl from Throd, careful not bump her head or tail as she hauled her into the maintenance tube.
By the time Throd squeezed his bulk through the access panel and into the maintenance tube, the girl was in bad shape. Her lips were an alarming shade of pastel blue, and her pulse was little more than a thready tremor in her wrist. Heck tried to massage some warmth into the girl’s hands, then shook her head. ”We have to get her back to the ship, now."
Throd nodded and took the girl into his massive arms. He cradled her as gently as a mother holding an infant, and hunched his body around her to protect her from any stray attacks that might find them. Heck was always amazed at the tenderness the big man had in him, given how much of his body was metal dedicated to mayhem rather than flesh and bone.
As they hustled down the maintenance tube, Heck hailed Dragora. "Can you get a fix on us? We’re going to need a pickup, pretty much right fucking now."
The ship hummed an ancient Irish tune, something she'd picked up while browsing the networks to fill in the blanks in her personality modules. It was the equivalent of a busy tone, letting Heck know the ship was working on the problem and couldn’t spare any cycles for speech. After a few seconds, her voice, fluid and soothing as always, oozed through the comms channel. "I see you, but I can't reach you. The station's sentry gear is still up, and the new ship is powering up its weapons on approach. I can't get anywhere near a landing bay without getting torn to shreds.”
Heck extracted a thick syringe from a metal tube on her harness. "Fine, we can't get her to the ship for medical attention, we’re going to have to make do here."
She yanked the opaque sleeve off the vial of red ooze and a few drops of the crimson gel dripped from they hypodermic's tip. "Throd get her over here. We’re doing this now."
The cyborg kneeled down, and Heck pulled the tattered jacket away from the girl’s arm. She lined up the artery and laid the needle’s tip against it. She struggled to remember the lessons she'd been given on injecting the ooze, but the emergency aid class seemed like a lifetime ago. I guess we're winging it.
Before she could inject the ooze, Zotz’s voice snapped through the comms channel. "Don't. Getting a warning from Network. The ooze will contaminate the technology we’re here to retrieve. If you inject her, we forfeit the objective."
Hive and Throd watched Heck with expressionless eyes. They didn’t have to say anything; she knew it was her call to make. Whatever good or bad came of it would fall on her shoulders, just like every other fucking decision she made.
Crouched in the cramped maintenance tube, Heck weighed her outfit's profits and ranking against this young woman's life.
Hive's voice broke the silence. "The girl is only a vessel for the technology. We could remove it from her, then inject her with the ooze to save her life."
Heck imagined what that would look like. Implants replaced the girl’s spine, and the circuitry holding it in place had to connect to her circulatory and nervous system in a thousand places. Tearing it out of her without a surgical suite would be nothing short of butchery. If they managed to do it without tearing the technology apart, it would be a miracle. And if the girl survived, even with injection of red ooze, she’d probably endure the rest of her miserable life in crippled agony. "That's just a slower way of killing her."
The drone leaned back against the tube's wall. “I know this is your decision, but I must offer my advice. Doin
g this will greatly damage our aggregate score, and it will have an impact on our relationship with sponsors. We are Operators, not emergency rescue services. We get sent to do a job, without questions or complaints. It is not always pretty, but that is the nature of the game we have agreed to play."
The girl gasped and shuddered in Throd's arms. The big man's eyes met Heck's. “Hive’s right. We can’t save the girl and win the scenario. But I vote we save her anyway.”
Zotz voice broke into the comms channel again. "If we do this, it will kill our ranking. And Hive is right; we’ll lose sponsors over this. It could take a long time for us to rebuild their trust."
Heck ground her teeth. She’d expected Zotz to back her play on this. She'd rescued him from a mining colony three years ago, freeing him from a life of endless pain and hard labor in the black hole of a rare earth minerals mine. "So that's a nay from you?"
She heard the tech cursing under his breath. Then, "No, goddammit, it's not. Do it."
Heck hesitated, knowing how much harder she was going to make life for the Metal Rats. But she was this girl not so long ago. Men in white lab coats had peeled half her face away like a cheap mask and replaced it with a chrome skeleton’s grin. They’d replaced half her body with metal, to make her a better killer. If someone hadn’t stepped in to save her, she’d be less human than Hive.
Offering up a silent prayer to any gods who might be listening that she wasn’t too late, Heck thrust the needle into the young woman's artery and depressed the plunger. The ooze was thick as syrup and flowed through the needle slower than honey dripping from the comb. "Come on, come on," Heck whispered.
Long seconds later, the last of the ooze disappeared into the girl’s frail, damaged body, and Heck returned the used syringe to the case on her harness. There wasn't much of the nanite soup left in the vial, but it was a strictly controlled substance. Only Operators and others in the combat side of the Umbra game were allowed to use the ooze, because the powers that be feared what would happen if it made its way into the general populace. There was also the very real concern that the experimental goo was basically liquid cancer waiting for a chance to mutate and run buck wild through a terrified populace.
Sure, injecting the girl with the stuff was breaking the rules, and it cost her team the scenario’s prime objective, but at least the girl would live.
At least Heck hoped she would live.
A seizure rippled through the young woman's body, shaking her from head to toe like a rat caught in a terrier's jaws. Throd struggled to hold her, and it took everything the big man had to keep from dropping her to the metal deck.
At the same instant, Heck's AR screen burst into view and spat a stream of red penalty messages at her.
..::..::..||..::..::..//UMBRA SCENARIO REPORT BEGIN\ ..::..::..||..::..::..
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Failed (contamination)
PENALTY: Refused sponsor condition (-500 points)
PENALTY: Damaged sponsor equipment (-500 points)
PENALTY: Improper dissemination of Operator technology to civilians (-1000)]
..::..::..||..::..::..\ UMBRA SCENARIO REPORT END// ..::..::..||..::..::..
There were more, but those were the big ones. Heck cursed as she did the math; they’d lost 4000 points saving the girl, and they’d only had 500 points before that. If they left the station 3500 points in the hole, that was the end of the Metal Rats. The network would yank their charter, and the outfit would be back to fighting dirty wars in the undercity slums before the week was over. She hadn’t rescued the girl just to dump her into a beggar’s life.
Think, Hecate, she snapped at herself.
The Ogre blasted into the laboratory the outfit had just vacated, spewing heavy weapons fire in every direction. Heat and smoke from the rapid-fire explosions washed into the tube, choking the Operators. "Time to move!"
The Ogre had found them, which meant it was being guided by the station's security systems.
And those security systems were in these maintenance tubes, as well as the main passageways. It was only a matter of time before the Ogre tracked them down and flushed them out of their hidey hole with some well-placed munitions.
The outfit needed an escape, and they needed it very soon.
Heck keyed her comms and hailed Dragora. "Any chance you can get to the landing bay now?”
"Negative. The enemy ship is closing fast, and the station's defense grid is still operational. I'll alert you if the situation changes. At the moment the only way I'm going to be landing on the station is if I make my own bay, and I'm not sure my weapons can pierce the hull."
Holy shit, Heck thought. That's it.
She’d just figured out a solution to all their current messy problems in one fell swoop.
They just had to survive her big plan, and they were home free.
7
Heck led the team back along the path she and Hive had taken to reach the laboratory, hoping her memory was accurate. Behind and below them the Ogre crashed through the station at a terrifying pace. It wasn't shooting, not anymore, it just slammed through anything that got in its way as it pursued them.
Zotz's panicked voice crackled through the comms. "Company's here. Dragora's in evasive mode, but Cinder is really pissed. I don't know how long we can stay out of his reach."
Heck's eyes flipped up to her AR display and she called up a map of Iris Station. She highlighted her target with a thought, "This is where we’re going to be in about two minutes. Be there."
Zotz paused, then said, "There's nowhere for us to land."
Heck couldn't suppress a grin. "You're not coming to us. We're coming to you."
They passed the broken fan and Heck was reminded of Hive's warning. Her lungs ached, and she realized it wasn't just from running. With the ventilation system busted, the station wouldn't pump fresh air out of the oxygen catalysts. The passages atmosphere was going stale, and it wouldn't be long before they all passed out and then asphyxiated.
They just had to make it another hundred meters, and then…
A startling thought shot through her mind. Heck called back to Hive, "What's the market price on one of those Ogres?"
The drone answered, "This is a strange time to shop for autonomous weapons platforms, but the last I checked it was 50 million standard units."
Heck skidded to a stop. She held out a hand to warn the others to hold up, and they gathered in the cramped maintenance tube. "You all trust me?"
Throd and Hive both nodded.
Heck took a deep breath. This was the riskiest thing she'd ever done, and if she guessed wrong they were all going to die in the next few minutes. "All right, then. Down we go."
Before they could ask any questions, Heck grabbed the edge of the entrance to the observation blister and dropped through it.
The opening let out where the domed blister met the station's bulkhead. Heck released her grip and slid down the transparent glass to the observation deck.
She could see the Ogre coming for them. Twisted metal and shattered glass flew before it like omens of war. Thirty seconds, no more, and it would be on top of them.
Right where she wanted it.
Throd landed next to her, his heavy frame shaking the deck. He cradled the girl in his arms and shielded her from the worst of the impact. She stirred when Throd touched down, but her eyes didn't open. Her tail twitched and fell out from beneath the jacket, and the triangular antennae on the top of her head swiveled toward the Ogre. Heck couldn't tell if those were from reflex or the girl was waking up.
Hive landed next, weapon pods extended and pointed in the Ogre's direction. "We appear to have reached a dead end. I sincerely hope your endgame involves something more than the four of us getting slaughtered like sheep."
Heck decided not to dignify the drone's sarcastic quip with a response. The Ogre was almost upon them, and then he'd have his answer. I'm smarter than the average bear, buckethead.
Dragora slipped into view just outside the observat
ion bubble. A much larger ship approached in the distance, gun batteries glowing a toxic green as they charged.
It was perfect timing, and Heck crossed her fingers and offered up a silent prayer this plan would work.
All she needed was for the Ogre to come charging in, and then…
The Ogre screeched into view, it's legs pounding against the sides and floor of the station passageway.
One more second, Heck thought, and it's going to step over the edge and overbalance. Perfect.
Except the Ogre didn't blindly charge into the blister. It didn't lose its balance and tumble onto the fragile shell, shattering the glass and sending the weapons platform spinning into space.
Instead, it stopped and reared back on its hind legs. Then it corrected its position, and pointed every one of its weapons at Heck.
The rescued girl stirred, and reached out toward the Ogre with one hand. Her shrill voice pierced the air, "Kitty!"
8
Heck stared up at the Ogre and thought, That's no kitty, kid.
Her next desperate thought was, I'm going to die.
And then, followed by a wave of anger, Like hell I am.
"Hive," she shouted. "Shoot the blister. Now."
The Awakened drone pivoted on his right heel, and unleashed a full salvo from his weapon pods into the clear dome. Missiles streaked from their mounts, and energy weapons belched red bolts. The combined arms crashed against the blister's surface, and deep, jagged cracks crazed away from the point of impact.
Throd stared at Heck, eyes wide, mouth agape. "You're going to get us all killed."
Heck didn't have time to explain. "Just jump."
Hive didn't wait to be told twice. He hurled himself over the railing and landed in the same spot he'd fired his weapons into. The cracks widened, and chunks of the blister fell away. Escaping atmosphere whistled through the holes, a warning siren of their impending doom.
